Some really excellent documentaries have been made about underground filmmakers, both old and new. These 7 are easily caught on DVD.
Maya Deren
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Netflix has begun streaming underground movies over the Internet, now you can watch Eraserhead, Maya Deren, My Winnipeg and more online.
Check out the list of films that screened at the 1946 Art in Cinema series, which mounted a major retrospective of underground film.
J.J. Murphy’s Me And You And Memento And Fargo isn’t quite an anti-Hollywood formula handbook, but it is a terrific antidote to tired movie structures.
From 1986 to 1996, the American Film Institute gave out the Maya Deren award to underground film artists like Kenneth Anger and Shirley Clarke.
Outrageous Underground Film Moment 4: Stan Brakhage films his wife Jane give birth to their daughter in graphic, gory detail.
This year sees the first ever Arkansas Underground Film Festival in Hot Springs, screening work by Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Jon Clark and Neil Ira Needleman.
Notable underground film events of 1977 were John Waters directing Desperate Living and David Lynch making Eraserhead, plus Ric Shore’s brilliant Punking Out.
Edited by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Experimental Cinema is a very academic film book with some very engaging bits.
Visionary Film by P. Adams Sitney is still a must-read history of underground film even though it basically says that history petered out in the early 70s.